YOU WONDER IF YOU CAN WRITE SOMETHING
that has hope in it.
Today, you read, there’s a big rush to buy
bomb shelters.
Normal people are buying them,
not just millionaires.
There is some hope in that:
thinking life will go on after.
If you go shopping today
it won’t be for a bomb shelter
but a beautiful anything
you can find: a soft pair of socks,
a necklace that catches the light
although nothing will get your mind off
of the mass grave in Ukraine,
the jaw-bones & eye sockets,
the pregnant women running
from the destroyed maternity hospital.
Your friend said she doesn’t read the news
because what can she do, what can any of us do
to stop the butchers
because we have to be butchers
to stop them, a hopeless logic.
You could put a pear in your pocket
& pretend you have a horse to slowly feed it to.
You could build a ramshackle hut
for the dandelions before the spring wind
blows through.
—from Poets Respond
March 22, 2022
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Susan Browne: “I wrote this poem after reading the story in the New York Times about Europeans buying bomb shelters, iodine pills, and survival guides.” (web)
